This blog is about The Big Picture - information and insights about what goes on in the world outside our borders - and what it means for Americans. Unless otherwise specified, all photos from Deena Stryker archive.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

TWO PEOPLES' ARMIES

Today's irony: If you weren't aware of it before, you know by now that the Israeli army is a people's army: otherwise, they wouldn't be going on camera complaining of the way their superiors ran the recent war. (Also, in this country of 6 million, everyone knows everyone else..) But it seems clear that defective leadership is not the only reason why the Israeli army cannot fight as well as the Lebanese people's army (Hezbollah): both are fighting for their land, but Hezbollah recruits don't need to be told contorted rationalizations why it is their land, whereas the Israeli soldiers do. Those who are defending their land from the gut always win over those who are defending it from the head.

P.S. Defective Israeli leadership also has a lot to do with the fact that Israel's case is a rationalization. The first generation, for whom the Holocaust and settlement were a reality, is gone. The second will choose an opportune moment to take former Prime Minister Sharon off life-support, but it cannot instill in today's Israelis the flame that made their elders think, in defiance of every religious morality, that two wrongs could make a right.

P.P.S. CNN replayed yesterday's presidential press conference with the intent of minimizing the terrible impression it made to see George Bush joking as he talked about the need to continue sacrificing lives to the "war on terror". Shameful.

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Welcome to Otherjones!

The alternative press is replete with despair and ‘hope’, neither of which is helpful. ‘Squawking’ may alleviate some of the pain Americans experience at being identified with a government that brutalizes Others at will, but it doesn’t change the ‘facts on the ground’. As for hope, it is an easy cop-out: in the present state of the world, we can never be certain that tomorrow will come. Whether a barefoot child in Africa or a hedge-fund manager, all of us are the potential victims of hubris.

This blog aims to prepare my readers in ways more important than stockpiling food and bandages for whatever happens, as we transition from an American century to a world century, helping them see through the web of lies with which we are being controlled.

Having lived for years at a time in half a dozen ‘foreign’, countries — learning their languages and histories — I have a unique ability to identify events that bear watching. That life, however, could not provide ‘retirement benefits’, so if you appreciate the unique combination of information and insight that characterizes my work, I hope you will integrate a small donation to Otherjones into your budget.

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If You Had Been Watching....

One of the worst aspects of the US media landscape is its neglect of what goes on in the rest of the world. When I returned from nineteen years of living in France, where I sometimes watched CNN’s excellent coverage of world events, I was surprised that in the US, CNN offered nothing comparable. I called the main editorial office in New York and was told ’Americans aren’t interested in foreign affairs’, revealing one one the reasons why the US government gets away with wreaking havoc around the world: Americans have no information that would prompt them to protest their county’s actions abroad.

The fact is that several countries’ governments — aside from the British — fund international television channels. These include France 24, NHK (Japan) , Al-Jazeera (Qatar) RT (Russia) and Telesur (Latin America). These channels usually broadcast in English, Spanish and Arabic, using native speakers, enabling most people in most parts of the world to hear news that their national outlets do not cover and get a broad window onto the world.

Meanwhile, Americans are told that the channel that is most significant for them, RT, is propaganda!

RT is significant not only because, like the other foreign channels it offers a wide range of programs but because it includes opinions from many well-known Americans who are barred from our own mainstream media.

From time to time I will signal significant news stories covered by these foreign channels that are absent from our own.